the jersey shore is unthinkable. and we know that there are many people who own homes, who we've evacuated, who are going to want to get back on to the island to assess the damage to their homes. we are nowhere near being able to let you back on to the island. >> in addition to the lives we lost, the damage we suffered across the city, is clearly extensive and will not be repaired overnight. >> people put themselves in the way of danger that was really inspirational. and if it wasn't for the national guard and the state police and the nypd and what the agencies at this table did, i think that's the number of the loss of life would have been much greater. >> even new york hospital was forced to evacuate last night when emergency generators failed. babies, newborns taken out of the nicu. the new york stock exchange closed today. it will reopen tomorrow.

it was the first two-day weather closing since the blizzard of 18 8. it was a night to remember or forget. >> there's a mandatory evacuation order under effect. real concern here is to the inland lakes connect to the ocean and wipe out the town in this area. >> this is a dangerous situation. police are creating a collapse zone. no cars, no pedestrians around the area of 57th street where this building is under construction and this is crane is dangerously dangling over the street. >> the storm surge right now, that's just the water rise alone with this, 6.6 feet. that's 2.2 feet higher than irene. we're awaiting that high tide coming up. for example, irene was about right here, all right, and what we could see with another two and a half feet is up through here. >> no campaigning for the president. he is locked down at the white house, telephoning governors and mayors and meeting with fema. >> mitt romney is not

campaigning but holding what his campaign calls a hurricane relief event coincidentally in battleground ohio. >> we have a lot of goods here and i know there's more coming in and we're going to box these things up in just a minute and put them on some trucks and then we're going to send them into i think it's new jersey. >> new yorkers ordered off the streets last night it was a lonely late night for letterman and fallon. no live audiences to laugh at their jokes. >> got up this morning, turned on the radio and listened for the talk show closings. i have no luck. >> talk show closings. >> yeah. >> that's a play on -- >> wait a minute. i think i hear people banging at the door of the theater demanding to come in. wait a minute! we don't want to miss this. the storm has stopped the presidential campaign, so at least some good has come of it. >> and good day. aim andrea mitchell, live in washington. not a laughing matter today. the northeast crippled by sandy.

8 million without power, the storm moving very slowly toward canada. the weather channel's hurricane expert brian norcross joins me now. tell us the latest and give us feel for where it is going, where it's been and how unusual this storm has been. >> all right. andrea, this storm is still spinning around, centered here in pennsylvania now. none of them is of consequence. it's all about the weather going on. along the east coast in the new york metropolitan area a few showers around. still a good breeze coming off the ocean, though, and that will slow down some of the power restorations, because some of those winds are gusting 30 miles an hour or more. that's a problem. heavy rains around washington and also around washington, the water from the chesapeake bay is being pushed down now and is still causing some flooding although the general flooding picture is much, much mo improved from yesterday. up into maine there are severe thunderstorms with winds over 50 miles an hour up that way, so more power may go out with those

storms and then over in the midwest, terrific winds coming in off lake michigan, winds near 60 miles per hour at gary, indiana. more threats of power outages there. look at the snow they're measuring it in feet from maryland on down into west virginia and in actually snowing in western pennsylvania. johnstown, pennsylvania, now. it's not over. it's just getting slowly better and this process is going to go through tomorrow and by thursday it's going to be pretty much gone. in terms of the forecast, andrea, there in new york for the storm surge, a lot of questions, should they evacuate and was it worse than forecast, the answer is the forecast was essentially perfect. the national hurricane center forecast the water to come up between six and 11 feet above the high tide. it came up nine feet above the hi tide at battery. nobody should have been surprised if they had been watching the forecasts and extreme storm was forecast. you and i talked about it last week. this really came in.

unfortunately, just as forecast, if anything, they got a little less rain out here in western pennsylvania than we thought they would. but in general, unfortunately this was right on target and the hurricane center really did a terrific job as well. so, you know, the folks that didn't prepare, didn't prepare because they didn't pay attention basically. andrea? >> and what we saw that flooding, now we've got, of course, and we're going to get to our reporters on location, we have the flooding in lower manhattan which forced con ed at some point last night to deliberately turn off the power so you had the blackout below 39th street in manhattan, you had the subways still that have to be checked, tunnel by tunnel. >> right. >> for whatever saltwater damage there has been because of the flooding and then the jersey shore. talk to me about new jersey because here you have a whole coastline that has been rearranged by this storm. >> yeah. i don't think we know all that's happened to the jersey shore yet. governor christie is going up in a helicopter and we're going to

get our first pictures here this afternoon. we've had reports from point pleasant beach where the beach was essentially taken and spread through the town and then we've heard from atlantic city and seen where the boardwalk was ripped up and so forth. in the middle is long beach island and i haven't seen any reports from long beach island. what happened there is they were on the side of the storm where the water was pushed from the ocean in across the shoreline. farther south, down into maryland and delaware, much of the coast where they had some damage, they didn't have that hard push of water at high tide like good parts of the jersey shore did. so we're very, very fearful there and also on the south shore of long island. we also haven't seen that. so there is much more to learn about just those two areas let alone other areas spread around the northeast. >> and as you point out, the high winds, continuing high winds, and gusts are going to make it even that much longer before we get power restored to all of those people. >> that's right. >> thank you so much. thanks for all of your work and we'll continue to be checking

back with you and now to that point in new jersey, nbc's ron allen is in point pleasant beach, new jersey, where the storm surge devastated the beach front community. ron, your reporting yesterday was so extraordinary, i can't even tell you how grateful all of us are that you're safe and grateful to all of your reporting, the veteran journalist ron allen and the day after point pleasant beach and look at the scene there. >> thanks very much, andrea. a great team of people here working on all of that yesterday and today and tomorrow. as someone said, yeah, the beach just basically the ocean just came and ripped through this town. this is essentially the sand dune that we were standing on yesterday that was the protection for the town from the ocean and it is just -- it covered the first few blocks into the town. this is a parking meter. don't know if you can see it. the height of a parking meter so the sand here is probably three feet deep and they've been

trying to open up the roads, trying to figure out ways to get around town. they've done some work here but i think that's part of the problem along the jersey shore, that there are some areas you can't get to. communications are down. no power here. the phone service is very spotty. so i imagine there are some areas of the shore where crews have not been able to get to yet to really understand what's gone wrong and how much power, how widespread the power outages are. again back here, you can see some of the damage. here's a hotel where we were basing ourselves yesterday and that's the front of the hotel and it's been completely just blown out by the storm force winds and the ocean that was just pummeling this area. all this is going to be completely owe blib ter rated. go down to the ocean today, the shoreline is now just calm and peaceful. there's a -- about 50 yards wide and very calm and today the weather is -- it's a little chilly but there's been no rain, still wind picking up.

so ironic how different 24 hours, what a difference that makes because today it's just different from yesterday and last night, last night the ocean was literally just racing right up this street, the depth up to about our waist and just bringing sand and debris all over this town. it's going to take a long time to dig out. andrea? >> and ron, what about fresh water, sewage, what about -- there's no power, no communications. what about the sort of basics as far as people there are concerned? >> well, at this point, we have running water in the hotel that we're staying in where a lot of media are camped out. there's a utility truck here, a new jersey gas truck here i can see. they're concerned about gas lines and utility lines. there was some smell of gas and some areas that we were walking around earlier today, but nothing overpowering. there are a few people who stayed in this community, if you can believe that. people who said they just wanted to be here, wanted to protect their homes, wanted to witness this event for themselves. they're okay. they stocked up their homes with

nonperishable food and other goods so they're okay. but up and down this shoreline, from sandy hook to cape may, there's a lot of misery a lot of suffering and as we know it's going to take a long time to row restore the power. >> thank you again. thanks so much ron allen. >> in lower manhattan, major stretches of lower manhattan around battery park flooded without power after the hudson reached breached the seawall and a record shattering 13 feet. anne thompson is there. ann, a lot better today than last night. >> well, it is a little better, an drae ya, but we are still getting bands of rain. in fact, one is coming right now. the wind is gusting up to 30 miles per hour and all of that is making even starting the cleanup just that much more difficult. you know, new yorkers are used to bouncing back pretty quickly, but it's going to take a while to come back from sandy because last night in a very visible way, new yorkers learned just how powerful water can be.

we just sent a crew down to the south street seaport and i can tell you looking at the tape, the damage down there, windows blown out, water that came up as high as six feet, is really xrerds. now, today, new york city faces two problems. one is power outages. about three quarters of a million new york city residents who are without power today and the second is mass transit. there is a little bit of good news regarding mass transit. first of all, the bus service is going to start to be restored at 5:00 this afternoon. they're going to have sunday service. they hope to fully restore by tomorrow. the subways will take longer, perhaps as long as four days, says mayor bloomberg. governor cuomo has asked for and received a team of experts from the federal government who will come in to try to help pump the water out of the subway tunnels all of which flooded. the bridges are slowly opening back up. but they still don't want people driving around because it is just too dangerous. but perhaps the most disturbing

thing of all, is that at least ten new yorkers lost their lives in this storm last night. andrea? >> and ann, just a couple other things. there were moments like when the building in chelsea came down, i think it was around 8:00 or 8:30 last night. >> yep. >> when that building came down, those firefighters, those first responders, they went tearing in, visible from across the street, they just went right in without even missing a heartbeat to try to rescue anyone who was inside. just the response of the police and firefighters in new york, is so heart compelling. and then on top of everything else, new york hospital, the other side of the island, upper east side, that evacuation, with the nurses taking out the infants from the neonatal unit, nicu, 250 people, patients i think were evacuated from that hospital, so just a shout out again to all these people there.

>> they are just extraordinary, andrea. especially when you think of the firefighters, i mean they go into burning buildings, they go into situations to save someone and they never give it a second thought. not only did they do incredible work down in chelsea, queens where 80 homes burned and they were -- the firefighters not only had to deal with fire but also with water. and that extraordinary effort is why here in new york we call our firefighters the bravest and the police the finest and we have seen the best of that in the last 24 hours for sure. >> thanks so much, ann. thank you for all your help. a rough day, a rough night. we've got a lot more to tell, much more to come on "andrea mitchell reports." first, here is a welcome sight amid all the devastation from sandy. a rainbow in point pleasant new jersey. one of the hardest hit towns. inside as you can see, a

different story. this hotel, destroyed. sand scattered everywhere. power crews say they've got a huge job ahead. >> it's going to be a while cleaning up after this one, you can tell by looking around. it looks like a war zone out here. of dollars switching to geico sure are happy. i'd say happier than a slinky on an escalator. get happy. get geico. melons!!! oh yeah!! well that was uncalled for. folks who save hundreds of dollars switching to geico sure are happy. how happy, ronny? happier than gallagher at a farmers' market. get happy. get geico. we create easy-to-use, powerful trading tools for all. look at these streaming charts! they're totally customizable and they let you visualize what might happen next. that's genius! we knew you needed a platform that could really help you elevate your trading. so we built it. chances of making this? it's a lot easier to find out if a trade

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new jersey governor chris christie is helicoptering across the state touring the devastation to assess the damage. >> no question in my mind given the report that i've seen so far, that the devastation that's happened to new jersey is beyond what's happened to anyone else, at least with the reports i've seen so far and should come as no shock since the storm made landfall here. >> joining me now on the phone, new jersey congressman frank malone. thanks so much. i know your district covers significant parts of middlesex and mon mouth including bayshore and 16 communities along the

atlantic ocean. tell me, what is the extent of the damage, when can people return to their homes? what have you seen so far? >> the damage is really catastrophic, andrea. i just left union beach which is one of the towns along the bayshore on the sandy hook bay and the homes within maybe three or four blocks of the beach, many are completely destroyed. the waves carried some of them away. others are just, you know, pounded to a pulp. i've never seen anything like it. in long branch where i live, the boardwalk i would say two-thirds is destroyed, the promenade is under, the pier had serious damage and then you have other towns like seabright and m monmouth beach that had severe damage. i'm in kingsburg and going to look at the beach front area in congressesburg.

kingsburg was evacuateped and the mayor told me there's a lot of damage. i've never seen anything this bad. not only homes, businesses, infrastructure, you know, highlands, [ inaudible ] not able to use it and even the city hall in long branch now is not usable. it's to the public structure, it's to the residences and businesses and power is still out in all these communities and, you know, there's a real problem. people have to be very careful if they go outside or when they go back to their homes to see the downed power lines and the gas lines that are leaking so there's still a major safety problem that people have to look out for when they go back home and outside. >> well, that is all much worse than people might even have imagined. we knew with daylight, first light it was going to be bad. i'm looking at pictures we're showing from our camera crews an it is absolutely devastating and

as you point out there still are wind gusts, power not fixed and some first responders as you said, the long branch city hall, the local officials, i don't know where they're working out of. >> they're working out of the middle school. they're working out at the middle school because they can't use the city hall and i think in highland working out of the fire department. many of the fire departments and, you know, municipal structures have been severely damaged. this is -- this is pretty serious. i've never seen anything like it. certainly it -- irene was nothing like this and even the '92 nor'easter was not anything like this. in my lifetime i've never seen anything like it. >> congressman, is it -- is there any way to assess so far how fema has done, how the federal government has done in response, or are you just beginning to figure out what is

needed? >> well, look, i think that the emergency response in general has been great. i mean when i look at the -- i just left the emt headquarters in haslet, and in terms of the evacuating people, getting people to leave their homes, they did a great job all over from what i can see. of course, some people were reluctant to leave but most people did. you know, we're starting to do the assessments for fema now in the various towns. i mean obviously they're concerned about health and safety first but starting to put together the assessments and getting their engineers and their officials to start, you know, taking photographs and that type of thing so that they can submit damage assessments to fema. but i mean i have to say, everything i've seen so far, both at the federal, state, local level has been very good in terms of emergency management. >> well, thank you so much,

congressman frank pallone from new jersey for taking time to talk to us. our best to you and your constituents and everyone in new jersey. >> you too. thank you and keep safe. >> hurricane sandy has blown up all talk of campaign plans for this final week before the elections creating challenges for both sides. joining me for our daily fix, chris cizilla, msnbc contributor and managing editor of post politics.com and mark halperin, senior political analyst for "time" and msnbc. first of all, the president has been on a conference call with governors, with mayors from the affected area, in the white house, not campaigning. they've canceled their ohio campaigning for tomorrow as well. joe biden also canceled campaigning. how do they handle this and then you've got the image of mitt romney doing what they say is not a campaign event, in the same place they were going to hold a campaign event, they say they're making collections for hurricane storm relief.

chris cizilla, first to you, we checked with the red cross, the red cross said they're always grateful for donations, but this is not what they need or want. they always tell people please donate money. we have our own packagers and wholesalers and distribution system and to now get niece canned goods from the romney event in ohio and have to package it, used clothes they have to clean, they can't go directly to victims what they need is donations of blood and donations of money. it does seem like a thinly veiled -- why ohio? why choose ohio? >> right. because the storm is kind of -- >> not in ohio. >> you ask how do you -- how does president obama and mitt romney handle this politically? the answer i think can be summed up in one word delicately. it's a very fine and thin line. it's easier from a political perspective from president obama because he goes about the duties of being president hp he called

chris christie, mike bloomberg, cory booker, governor cuomo making sure he knows everything going on the ground, making sure federal assistance gets where it's needed. it's much harder for mitt romney in that he can't really campaign and yet, he doesn't want to totally disappear and crede the last five days of television coverage. it's still the president of the united states acting like the president of the united states. it's when -- it's how you get into situations like we saw in ohio today. i don't -- i don't question the motives. i think in a short period of time what mitt romney was trying to do is how can we thread this very fine line. so i sort of understand in that way. it's just difficult because when you get this close to an election, andrea, six days, everything is with politics. everything. that's what the hard thing that mitt romney is trying to do, how do you take advantage or at

least stay in the conversation, with six days left without appearing to be just overtly political and campaigning. >> mark halperin, how are they managing it? >> i don't really have any criticism of how either of the candidates is conducting themselves. governor romney had to position somewhere, he wants to do something as chris said to be part of the conversation and no one questions his motives. i think there's still lots of campaign activity, ads still on the air for both sides, surrogate activity is out there. while the president has pulled back for another day, i would be surprised if he got back on the campaign trail thursday. if they want to look at what governor romney is doing and saying it's purely political he's campaigning they're welcome to. i don't think either guy has an easy position as chris suggests. they have an election and the country deserves while we care about the loss of life and care about the loss of property and the big problem the country has recovering from the storm, we need a rigorous debate over the last week which one to be elected president next tuesday.

>> i would add, right before we came on, i got a memo from jim messina the obama campaign manager essentially pushing back on the idea that pennsylvania is now a swing state. so to mark's point, the president himself might not be engaged and rightly so but his campaign is still active. this is not 16 days it's six days. >> the romney campaign put out a memo about pennsylvania. >> absolutely. >> let me ask mark akbout pennsylvania. i was there last week. the republicans saying we can do this, we can win pennsylvania, democrats saying it's not even in play. what is your assessment? >> well the obama campaign needs pennsylvania to win. the romney campaign doesn't. i don't think they would be wasting the money in pennsylvania on the republican side if they thought they had no chance or at least a chance to distract the democrats. if the romney campaign went on the air in new york, i don't think the obama campaign would feel compelled to match the dollars there. if the obama campaign went on the air in texas tv i don't

think the romney campaign would feel the need to go there. the vice president had a trip planned there means they're a little worried. republicans are doing two things at once, not just the romney campaign but outside groups, trying to put pressure on the president to defend turf like minnesota, and to move resources including candidate time away from ohio but to give themselves another potential path. it may be in the end, not predicting it, it's possible romney could win pennsylvania and lose ohio. that would be a surprise but give him a chance to get to 270. >> and by the way, mark, you and i first met in the '92 campaign and we've been through a lot of campaigns since. who would have ever thought that bill clinton would be the chief obama surrogate in this final week. now writing a rebuttal apparently to the des moines register to their endorsement of mitt romney. >> we don't need to be on the plane with bill clinton to know what mode he's in. he's polishing that op-ed he's writing for the des moines

register, clearly intended as a rebuttal to the paper's endorsement of mitt romney. bill clinton will be the way he was in 1996 when running for his own re-election trying to get as many campaign stops in as possible. with the president sidelined it's bigger than it was before. >> hillary clinton in bosnia today, on a trip to algeria yesterday, bosnia today, talking about how much she thinks about new york and sort of this wonderful irony all around. of course as the former senator from new york, she was pointing out her heart is there with the victims. >> the level of -- even the 2008 campaign, the idea at the end of the 2008 primary campaign you would say bill clinton is barack obama's most important surrogate and may get him over the line in some of these places you would be laughed at. now there's no question he's his most important surrogate. >> politics is completely unpredictable. chris cizilla, mark halperin, thank you so much. >> thanks arrange dre ya.

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national today not because we have any damage here but because trying to get up to the northeast up to the new york city area and boston, there's no point. those airports are closed. let me give you stats real fast here. 6,127p flights canceled today. today. 6,127. and systemwide, since they started shutting down flights over the weekend because of sandy, 16,000 flights. we're talking hundreds of thousands of people inconvenienced. i want to show you quickly a photo we got out of laguardia airport and this will tell you why they have shut down air traffic in new york. look at laguardia. it is under water. they've got significant flooding in laguardia. also significant damage as well at jfk and also at newark we're told and because of all of that they are deciding that they're going to keep the airports in the new york city area closed at least through today, probably through tomorrow, but when you see those photos you have to wonder how long will it take to

reopen laguardia at least. let me show you flight radar 24, a live website that shows what's happening in the skies over the country and we'll show you the northeast corridor. at any one time this area is packed. but because the new york city airports are still empty and because philadelphia is still not operating really, same at boston, same at washington, you can see that it is really significantly reduced compared to what we would normally have. keeping in mind that the northeast corridor, new york city, down to d.c., all the way up to boston, that stretch of the country is the heaviest, most congested air space in the country. usually making up almost a quarter, a quarter of all air traffic in a given day. so if you've got the major airports shut down, you can see what the ripple effect is. and andrea, here's the problem, the ripple effect, you got people stuck in these cities they're also stuck in paris, in moscow, in london, in los angeles, chicago, honolulu, all over the world because of this

hurricane. it's going to take a long time to get back up and running. back to you. >> i wouldn't mind be stuck in paris, but other than that it is a real crisis. thank you very much, tom costello. president obama is putting campaigning on hold to deal with this historic storm. chuck todd joins us next from the white house. customer erin swenson bought from us online today. so, i'm happy. sales go up... i'm happy. it went out today... i'm happy. what if she's not home? (together) she won't be happy. use ups! she can get a text alert, reroute... even reschedule her package. it's ups my choice. are you happy? i'm happy. i'm happy. i'm happy. i'm happy. i'm happy. happy. happy. happy. happy. (together) happy. i love logistics.

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thursday we don't know yet. i can tell you this, andrea, the travel pool has been called here, you know what that means, the president is headed somewhere. we assume it is something to do with disaster relief and what's going on here. so we can report that much with what just happened here. but the pa system announced the travel pool is to be ready for movement there. we expect at some point today to hear something from the president, whether it's here in the briefing room, whether it's somewhere else in washington, is unclear right now. >> and i've been told that there is conversation, shall we say, preliminary planning, in case there is an opportunity for him to do some event in the regions before he goes back out on the campaign trail. that's understandable. >> look, he's likely -- i mean that's right. he's going -- this is any disaster, any president will tour a disaster area like this. the question is, when is it safe for him to go. there is, you know, there is an

entire security component to go with the president, so you would -- it would seem right now, for instance, unlikely you could get to new york city, considering what you just reported with tom costello, the issue with the planes right now, with all of the issues in new york city, so you would assume it would be somewhere outside of new york city if he is able to do this in the next few days. >> well, this is chris christie earlier today, he's out in the field now, looking at the damage. this was part of his news conference today when asked about the political impact. >> well, i don't give a dam about election day. it doesn't matter a lick to me. at the moment. i've got much bigger fish to fry than that. so do the people of the state of new jersey. so, let the politicians who are on the ballot worry about election day. >> so before heading to new jersey, i think the president should be careful to make sure that he and chris christie are in sync. you don't want to have that kind of reaction. you know, blowing back on you. i mean the fact is, that chris

christie is responding in a way, you know, many of us new yorkers are familiar with but what rudy giuliani and the country is familiar with, but what rudy giuliani did after 9/11, the appropriate response of a political leader to a devastated community that needs political leadership. >> let's remember, this is a case where it's good politics not to play politics and not to get into an endless, you know, somebody playing politics but not. it's good politics to focus on disaster relief and what everybody needs and be attentive. here's what i understand happened. i know the president held a conference call with a bunch of mayors and governors in the affected areas and it's my understanding that basically new york and new jersey are looking -- are in the neediest of categories, that the other states affected, pennsylvania, maryland, connecticut, virginia, delaware, have needs but they were offering assistance to new jersey and new york. that's how overwhelmed new york and new jersey are with the

needs that they have going in. i think that it's pretty clear, at least from what the asks were from local and federal officials the concentration for help and outside resources is focused on new york and new jersey. >> the pentagon has released numbers through jim mcla chefsy our pentagon correspondent, 7400 national guard troops forces have been called up on to state active duty supporting governors in new york, massachusetts, virginia, delaware, connecticut and maryland as well, continuing in some of those areas. one quick question, we knew early voting in maryland was canceled yesterday. what about the impacts on election day, which are run by individual states? not a federal responsibility, but constitutional mandated to be that first tuesday in november. >> it's -- right. an act of congress, actually, the constitution gives congress the power and it was an act of congress started back in the mid 1800s to make it the first tuesday after the second monday.

but, it came up, i'm told this came up with craig fugate, fema director, came up with his counterparts in the state and locals, asking essentially is dealing with election day issues, moving precincts, trying to get power to them, is that something the federal government would pay for and mr. fugate, who had an experience with this on his own when he was running emergency operationings in the state of florida in 2004 when the state of florida didn't move a primary but had issues, primary being held, congressional primary being held right after a major hurricane had hit the area, and that any cost associated with moving or merging voting stations, power generators to have power for these voting precincts was covered by federal dollars and that was the question that was going on. so that's your most likely scenario here. you'll have states and looks like new jersey and new york will be in particular the ones that will have the biggest

issues here. it is -- if they want to -- they run their election. you know, they can't -- if they postpone it on the presidential, that takes an act of congress. could they extend voting hours? could they expand, move precincts, expand the voting hours, increase the amount of provisional ballots, allow people to vote in voting precincts that is not their home precinct to deal with things? all of those issues will be dealt with in the next week. >> as you remind me, originally the election of our president was in march before it was moved to november. >> that's right. >> thank you very much, chuck todd. >> you got it. >> special coverage of the historic storm continuing next. we'll talk to connecticut senator richard blumenthal. ♪ i'd like to thank eating right, whole grain, multigrain cheerios! mom, are those my jeans?

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and breaking this new video just in to msnbc, new jersey national guard has posted new video, their response to sandy, conducting rescues along the coast. look at that shoreline. these are first aerial views of the devastation as the ocean just brought the sand in and covered streets, homes. moving the shoreline of new jersey. meanwhile, governor malloy is spending the day touring the damage throughout his state of connecticut after sandy ripped through connecticut killing three residents, causing major flood damage and power outages throughout the southwest part of the state. connecticut senator richard blumenthal joins me by phone. i know you're looking at the damage. tell us what you've learned so far about what has happened to connecticut. power outages, trees down, and, of course, most likely flooding there along the long island sound. >> very severe flooding in certain areas of the state i'm traveling with the governor along the shoreline where there

has been devastation in pockets. fortunately the power companies are beginning to restore power to about 600,000 or more homes without it. about 40% of the state. they restored power to about 150,000 households. but we've suffered two deaths, one of them a volunteer fireman who was killed when a branch fell on him, a lost branch, and another elderly woman and two missing, so the recovery has begun. the devastation is pretty bad. having been out in the force of the storm early yesterday evening, cane tell you it is simply staggering. it was absolutely huge, and we're fortunate that there weren't more deaths or injuries. >> senator, what more do you need? can you tell from your tour with the governor, what is fema not providing or what can the pentagon do to help you, with the national guard support? >> what we're going to be

seeking and we have very strong and robust response from the federal government, is aid and the recovery from fema. certainly reimbursement for so that their taxpayers do not have to bear the financial hit and overridingly the objective in my view has to be to prevent the economy from suffering damage, job growth and economic problem, which we've had in this state shouldn't be impeded by the cost of recovery.

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. breaking now, new video of the 150th helicopter from the new jersey guard. we've seen some pictures minutes ago looking for displaced residents along the new jersey coastline in the aftermath, of course, of hurricane sandy. extraordinary pictures. new jersey chris christie is assess the damage warning residents that the recovery effort is going to take time. >> the devastation is unprecedented, like nothing we've ever seen reported before. so we need to keep that in mind in terms of gauging our expectations for how quickly

this will happen. >> and joining me now from kay may, new jersey, the southernmost tip of new jersey, danielle lee. what is the situation there? cape may is close to where this hurricane hit, made landfall? >> reporter: good afternoon, andrea. people in the town of cape may largely spared by this storm, and let me show you why. here at congress hall where we rode out the storm, they're laying out the picnic tables. to the left they're removing all of the panels from the windows. the damage here was very, very small. most of the flooding was contained to one street. that is so different considering the damage across most of the state when you look at some of the these images of pure devastation, flooding in the streets, along the coasts. more than 2 million people without power and three people killed. it will take months for new jersey to get back to normal, so people here in cape may feel

very blessed this afternoon. reporting live, i'm danielle lee. back to you. >> thank you so much. it's nice to end on a bright note. that does it for us on this edition of "andrea mitchell reports." keep your friends and family safe. tamron has a look at what's next on "news nation." >> we have a lot in the next hour. we got word that the travel pool that is a group of reporters that cover the president, they've been told the president is leaving the white house to do something. he's not campaigning today. it's likely the president may be going to some of the nearby areas hit by the storm. we'll have the latest. we're getting new video in from new jersey. it captures in a powerful way so much of the damage we have been covering since yesterday and today. look at these new images. we'll get more for you. plus, a number of people still trapped in atlantic city, and there's a word war going on between the mayor of atlantic city and governor chris christie

of new jersey. sadly caught in the middle are thes are of atlantic city, one of the areas hit hardest by the storm. the storm has forced scott brown and elizabeth warren to call off their final debate. we'll have a live report from boston. the only way to firm ski? challenge the need for such heavy measures with olay. regenerist micro-sculpting serum for firmer skin in 5 days. pretty heavy lifting for such a lightweight. [ female announcer ] olay regenerist.